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ZenCash is a private, decentralized, and reliable platform for communications, transactions, and publishing.
In production using zero-knowledge proofs for anonymous transactions with an encrypted memo field stored on the ZenCash blockchain.

Hi Rolf, I am the system administrator of 10 zencash secure nodes. My understanding is that IPFS protocol is being considered for ZenPub services. Have the team looked at the potential for use of Filecoin protocol (same developers) for decentralised file storage on ZenCash secure nodes, enabling the incorporation of this service onto ZenCash platform and adding earning potential to secure nodes operators? Are there any other ideas the team have for services on secure nodes?

yeah, that's the issue. There is no project available right now that has what we need for integration. I thought that there would be good parallel development. We are actually ready to start integrating an anonymous publishing bridge into the wallets, but are having a hard time figuring out which project we can work wtih.

I missed the PC boom in the 80's, was still in school. I missed the Internet boom in the 90's, was at sea and living in Hawaii. Caught the tail end of the IT box business when I joined Cisco in 2000. When the Voice over IP phone system began, I started a business and did well, selling the company in 2014.

My lesson from this is when you find out about a new and rapidly growing industry, join it in whatever way you can. I started mining because that is in the sweet spot for my capabilities, and I had money I needed to put to work from the sale of my IT business.

Crypto projects have turned into what I call full stack businesses. The ones that are going to succeed need the full range of small business capabilites, including software developers, project managers, translators, business development people, finance, graphics artists, system administrators, and everything else. Identify a project you like, and start contributing for free. Do thing that help people out. After you do this for a while, people will notice you, and ask you to be part of the team because they like what you do.

There is a lack of people who are able to identify what needs to be done, then do the work to get it done. Just jump in and get involved somehow, thrash around in the industry for a couple years, then you will find yourself knowledgeable and useful.

If you need to still earn a paycheck while doing this, do it as a side job. Just don't watch TV or netflix until you have things figured out.

The thing I have not figured out about PoS is what is the disincentive to fork the coin. On a fork, both forks can stake just as much. I like mining, but I don't think it is going to last forever as a profitable endevour.

What type of wallet are you mining into before sending to your hardware wallet? Do you mine onto a MYETH Wallet on a laptop, then periodically transfer to a hardware wallet? Any advice securing the MyETH Wallet based on your lessons learned?

For ethereum and ethereum classic I mine to a hardware wallet address. I am not as concerned about the buildup of small transactions in a hardware wallet for those tuypes of protocols as I am for Bitcoin type protocols

For Bitcoin type protocols I mine to a software wallet. Most of those are on virtual machines that I run on a PC running linux with an encrypted hard drive. I make many different encrypted backups and keep those in many different places.

From the Discord: @rocket hello, can you please ask Rolf the following questions: 1. is zencash working towards getting rid of the trusted setup that was inherited from zcash, if so what is the time frame? 2. Is zencash Working towards being able to have supply auditability, is so what is the timeframe? Does he think that the trusted setup is a factor in zcashes performance vs Mondeo and if so how does he feel that this affects zencash.

There is a possibility that the trusted setup that the Zcash team did, which is also used by ZenCash, was compromised. If it was compromised, there is also the possibility that ZenCash could be created out of thin air (kind of like US Dollars by the banks), and the supply would be much more than what we think it is, right now. I think there is a very low possibility that the trusted setup was compromised, and compared to all the other things that need to be done to get ZenCash where it needs to be, it is not yet time to address the trusted setup. It would be very nice, however, to have that small possibility be a zero possibility, so what are the paths to getting there?

One path is to do a new trusted setup, in a better way. We could do that if we wanted to, as we continue to bring zcash code into ZenCash, and zcash has created a way to redo the trusted setup with thousands of contributors.

Another way is to put in place a newer zero knowledge proof system like zk-STARKS instead of zk-SNARKS, or something else that works. We are working to engage with researchers to look at that.

Along with that, is there a possibility to do an audit of supply, as a way to figure out if the trusted setup was already compromised?

Regarding the performance of zcash in comparison to monero, they are completely different project. Monero was the first privacy coin to get widespread adoption. There is a benefit to being the first mover in any space.

Zcash, it appears to me, is not working to create widespread adoption by creating the project for users, else they would be developing beautiful and functional wallets for every type of computing device out there. But they are not doing that, and I don't know why.

They are either waiting on doing so until the Zcash protocol continues to mature, or are not interested in it. I am not really sure about it.

I can guess what they are doing. I am guessing they are working to get elements of zcash integrated into business products for use by established enterprise organizations. That's can be a much bigger market, and have more immediate payoff, than consumer level products. They could be, in effect, a wholesaler of privacy crypto technology to other businesses, who then build retail products around it. That's what I would do if I were running the show over there.

If they are going after the business market, it means they are leaving the consumer market for zk-SNARK based cryptocurrencies wide open for others, like ZenCash

Make usable wallets for all types of devices in every type of language.

Attend conference to speak to people, give presentations, and tell people what we are doing.

Work to grow the community through consistent engagement.

Add users by addressing specific interest groups in every part of the world, including miners, system administrators, investors, business owners, and people who care about privacy.

Work to improve the performance and reliability of all the different parts of the software.

Advertise, engage through social media, tell people what we are doing.

Create a consistent track record of success by telling people what we are going to do, do it, and show them how we did it. Then do the same thing again and again, year after year, until many people see that we have plans, we implement them, and they should use the products and systems from our project.

Enable community governance and work to transition the allocation of the treasury funds over to the community managed through the governance platform we are developing. By engaging many talented people we will come up with wildly successful ideas and be able to implement them.